Building your Brand - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode # 021

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome, everybody. I'm excited for today's episode. I've got our guest here who's, who's got a lot of expertise in marketing. So we should have a really good call. He said he's achieved 2,133% growth in sales over a 4-year period. He's a very results-driven strategic marketing executive, a fractional CMO, marketing strategist, and owner at Berardo Marketing Group. Welcome, Anthony Berardo. How are you?

Good, Joe. I'm great. Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's great to have you. I love having marketers on the show because we speak the same language and we can get a little geeky at times, but it's also very fun and informative for our viewers. So thanks for coming.

Yeah, a little geeky is an understatement. I mean, I could talk. It's pretty bad. I mean, I could talk on and on about just, just, just different strategies, you know, different technologies, just the excitement. Yeah.

Well, let's see, let's see where it goes. Let's start with the first question I like to begin all of the shows with is, is trying to think from, from your perspective, from your lens, what's the biggest opportunity that C-suites might be missing out on today?

Well, You know, I think a great opportunity that I see, you know, and especially in the marketplace that we could be offering brands is how consumerism looks like now coming out of the pandemic and making sure that we're, you know, I have primarily my experiences a lot been done in consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, health and wellness, consumer electronics. So, you know, there was always this divide in retail for brands was their retail sales and their e-commerce sales. But now more than ever, I'm looking at it more holistically. And I think what we saw over the past 2.5 years during COVID was these great paradigm shifts in consumerism. And what I mean by that is obviously, you know, at the end of Q1 in 2020, we saw a huge shift into e-commerce. Consumers, you know, had to do all their shopping, you know, in e-commerce and e-commerce saw huge, huge growth and huge traffic, huge volume. I was lucky enough to be a part of a company that was 100% e-commerce direct-to-consumer. You know, we saw brands like Peloton, a lot of tech brands booming during this time. And not only that, we saw a shift in consumerism where certain demographics like boomers, for example, had to adapt to these new technologies, had to adapt into e-commerce. And I think that the stat was something like consumers that were 65 and older were like the fastest group of online buyers spending like 49% or 50% on the web in 2020, more than they did in 2019. So they adapt these technologies. They also adapt to technologies like streaming and video conferencing by necessity. So, you know, that was like a golden age of e-commerce for about a year, year and a half. Then, you know, as the world started slowly opening back up again, and especially in 2022, what we've noticed is that there is, you know, e-commerce couldn't maintain the level of volume in 2022 that it had in 2020 and 2021. It was always going to be, you know, an area of opportunity for brands for certain. I mean, it's groundbreaking. But couldn't sustain that level of volume. And we noticed that more and more people weren't in front of their computers, they're out and about, they're back in stores, they're doing things again. So where I've seen brands now shifting back into retail, but I think the CMOs or the CGOs or the CEOs or anybody that now realizes this, and now we look at it more holistically, the customer lifecycle, the consumer lifestyle, like more holistically. How do we get retail and e-commerce to co-mingle, coexist, to understand that we're speaking to the customer across both channels? And the brands that adapt to that and are able to build this, you know, omnichannel strategy a lot more holistically, I think, are the ones that are going to really service their, service their brands and service their companies the best.

So how is that different than, like, I mean, I remember years ago the term brick and click, like, okay, years and years ago, which was this, you know, a similar phenomenon, retailers going online and, and having to have a a holistic strategy that way. What do you mean now that's different than that?

Well, I think there's obviously new technologies that are making it— that we can use that are making it a lot more efficient to execute, right? I'm a big part of what I like to look into is, you know, placing QR codes on packaging in the retail locations, right? This is now, especially since everybody started going to restaurants,, and using the touchless menus. Everybody knows how to interact with the QR code now, but it's not just a QR code, come to the website, you know, how are they handled, right? Where do they land? You want to push subscriptions. So somebody purchased a product off retail, you now can get them to the website, you could push subscriptions. Subscriptions are huge, right? That's monthly recurring revenue. Um, maybe you have a new technology. I'm working with a brand right now that has a proprietary technology in the ready-to-drink space. Completely groundbreaking, completely excellent, but we're in this education phase and they sell their technology to other brands in the ready-to-drink market. So we're using it almost like Intel where we're having QR codes on the labels of the cans to explain, all right, how was this drink manufactured and made? Come to the website and learn about it. So there's education for new products, new technologies, you know, they can interact with the brand, maybe you could push a loyalty program or some type of social media campaign. So I think QR codes are like a really, really emerging technology that could bridge that or unite that gap between retail and e-commerce. There's also technologies that are, that boomed during the pandemic that are still doing quite well now, right? There's no better technology that merges retail with e-commerce than Instacart, right? I mean, Instacart is basically brick and mortar retail, shop it online and get it delivered. Amazon Fresh is another one. And, you know, the funny thing about Instacart is that I think that in 2020, their revenues tripled, right? So the revenues tripled in 2020 because of the pandemic. Makes sense because people were shopping at home and they were getting all this cash, all this investment, which was great. But then by the end of last year, they weren't seeing the growth that they were seeing for 2020, 2019. But who was really? It was almost impossible, but they were still getting growth. They were at 10% at some point in the year. Then in the third quarter, it went up to 20%. I'll tell you right now, I don't know what they did in Q1 of 2022. I bet you it was still up, And I'll guarantee you that Peloton wishes it had those numbers at the end of last year. So it goes to show you that this blending of, in the consumer's mind, of retail to e-commerce is more gray than it ever has been. And then there was another technology that boomed during the pandemic. I think it kind of came down to earth a little bit, but I have a really good feeling about it. And there's these, I don't know if you ever heard of cloud kitchens, or ghost kitchens? It's where— I have not. So remember during the pandemic, restaurants had to— a lot of restaurants had to shutter and close, obviously. These kitchens came out where the restaurants would send the recipes to these cloud kitchens that would then make the food and then sell it on delivery apps like Uber Eats and Postmates and things like that. And deliver, and people would go purchase it and pick it up from there.

So the cloud kitchens were just like big industrial kitchens that were making all sorts of different food items from all sorts of different restaurants?

Correct.

Wow. But then they also adapted to start selling a lot of food and beverage products. Like the juice company I was working at could have cloud kitchens in LA where people could buy individual bottles of juice at the time. Through Uber Eats if you lived in LA rather than having to order from us in packs of 18. So it was— and then they were huge and big news in 2020, 2021 a little bit, and started dying out because from last I saw, the cloud kitchen market in 2019 was valued at over $30 billion. And it was expected to grow to CAGR of 12% over the next like 4 years. But you really haven't heard about them, but I feel like that's something that might come around again. And then another one, another technology that I think is really going to drive this consumer, this, this, this, that brands can lean into that marry this retail to e-commerce is delivery apps like Uber, uh, Uber Eats, Postmates, DoorDash. Because now Uber Eats, you can not only get food on there from restaurants, you can get pharmacy, you can get, um, alcohol, you can get retail.

Like, I think Bed Bath Beyond is on there, so you can do your shopping. You get— you get anything these days, which is great.

I mean, so this, you know, the reason it's different than it was years ago with brick and click is because of the the disruptive technologies that are coming out and evolving to facilitate this relationship.

It's much more blended as you've been saying, it's not one or the other, it's a blended experience and you see that as kind of the big shift post-COVID, that's the new normal?

I think so and I think that, you know, and the more that I talk to brands that have a retail presence and are looking to grow their direct-to-consumer e-commerce presence. And the more I look at them, the more like, this is how we could do it. We could use your retail presence to fuel your D2C presence, and then it could also be vice versa. I just got off a call with the company right now. You know, they have to ship frozen, and shipping frozen offers like tremendous logistical nightmares. I mean, because you have to make sure, you have to get it there in a certain amount of time or else the food will spoil. So that now you're talking about expedited airfare, you're talking major costs here. So on a direct, on their e-commerce website, the customer has to hit maybe certain minimums before they qualify for free shipping or even for delivery or else this client is losing money on orders. So he, he was like, you know, I kind of want to drive them to, to, to retail. Um, and I was like, no, we can do that. I think the idea here is with these— with the new customer is not let's drive them one or the other. We present your message in a way that makes it appealing for them to purchase and makes them want to purchase, but then let's give them the options and they purchase where they're most comfortable. If they want to meet the criteria to get it delivered to their house, that's fine. If they want to go pick it up in the store, we'll send them there. Or can they be facilitated through a disruptive app like Uber and get it delivered that way? I mean, there's now, there's a lot of different ways that we could approach it. But I think the idea is let's make the messaging so that it is holistic for everything. And make it so that it's more of an omnichannel strategy and then make the— allow the customer to decide, you know, how they want to, uh, you know, experience the, the purchase process or experience the delivery.

It's really fascinating when you think about it. It makes a ton of sense because we've all been through the experience ourselves, like, as consumers. We've all seen it happen and, and see the value of it happening. How are boardrooms reacting to this, the C-suites, when you talk to people? Are they getting it? Are they understanding it? Or is it a big shift in thinking to get people to start embracing it at the C-level?

Completely understanding and excited about it. As a matter of fact, 3 weeks ago, I was at a trade show in Anaheim, Expo West. It's an all-natural products trade show, right? Um, where a ton of great brands are there. And you get also, you get very some, a lot of really innovative brands at this show, uh, you know, because it's a lot of, a lot of companies coming out with like the, the latest food and beverage products that are plant-based or 100% plant-based, which is huge, or have functional ingredients in them like adaptogens and things like that. So you get a lot of really innovative brands. And when you go to this, this trade show, they They're all there with their sell sheets for retail, right? How much does a box weigh? What's the size of the boxes? How much can they put on a pallet? It's all about, you know, they're there for buyers from Whole Foods, Wegmans, all the supermarkets, right? Target, what have you. And that's what they're there for. So when I went there and I was meeting with various CEOs or founders or CMOs or, you know, COOs in the companies, And I was talking to them about this new paradigm shift to consumerism where it's great, you should be getting your retail presence all locked up, but let's talk D2C in this type of holistic messaging to really give you your brand an overall list. And it was totally receptive. They knocked it out. They were knocked out by it, floored by it, and it makes sense to them. And they see it. And, you know, when you out— because if you outline it a way that they understand— because everybody experienced it during the pandemic, you know? Everybody, everybody had to— no one could go to a— no one could have gone to a store. Everybody had to go home, had to— was stuck at home and had to figure out a way to get items to their house. So they understand that. And then they understand that they could see that retail's coming back, but e-commerce isn't going away. And all these technologies came out that could help us facilitate this messaging to the customer, to walk them along the process. So they're extremely, not only receptive, but excited about the prospects. And this is great for brands that are really, really especially ones that are really disruptive, that have really great product with great unique selling propositions that make them stand out from the competition, that have already a lot of retail locations or in a lot of retail locations like thousands, thousands of stores nationwide that want to grow their D2C. You know, it's like, how do we use that coverage you have in D2C retail and brick and mortar to drive your D2C business.

Yeah, I can see that as the primary, uh, maybe the lower hanging fruit. But how do you do it the opposite way? How do you find a brand that's primarily, uh, e-commerce now and have that brand start penetrating some of the more retail-shifted buyers?

That right there can take a little bit of a change of attitude amongst the board because there is— if you're— and I have the experience of dealing with brands that are 100% e-commerce, um, and they, they can be really, really, uh, skittish about going into retail because going into retail is like almost a whole new business.

Yeah, it is a whole new—

you know, I mean, you have to really fundamentally change their, their whole way of thinking operationally, the type of staff they have to have on. But, you know, and for especially in 2020 and 2021, where I was dealing with the brand that was all e-commerce, um, they were really, uh, against going into retail. And I always said to them, I was like, you know, you really should go into retail. Because whenever I dealt with brands that were born in e-commerce, but then got into like Best Buy and stores like that, you tend to see if they get good positioning and they have a good product, you tend to see that they get incremental lift from everything just by being on these store shelves. And I always told them, I was like, I think it's something we should look into. But they were like, ah, you know, this is a whole thing. Maybe we'll do it in 2022, 2023. I was like, all right, we were really doing well in e-commerce, so I never pushed it. We were getting great growth. But now that, you know, they really suffered, they had a Peloton effect in the sense that once the e-commerce traffic fell because the volume wasn't there, right? They were still getting a great conversion rate. They were still getting a great AOV. They still had a 40% return customer rate. All their KPIs were up very, very healthy, right? They had like a 4.5% to 5% conversion rate on the web store, but their traffic was down 30%. And it wasn't the case of, well, you know, are they not spending enough? No, they were maxed out on the volume of customers they can get for their best broad top-of-funnel terms. It's just that the volume of people searching for those top-of-funnel terms dropped. Because they benefited during the pandemic of having all this volume out there of searchers. So they, they really were hampered by this, this, this fact that e-commerce volume just wasn't where it was in 2020 and 2021. And now I am of the belief that if they went into retail back in 2018, 2019, they could have really staved off that lack of e-commerce and made it up in their retail location because they were at the forefront of their product line and others beat them to retail. And then now those companies are doing like $100 million a year.

Yeah. So it's a little bit of first to market or first mover. If you're not there, someone's going to be there. So yeah. You think as an e-commerce brand, you need to think about it as soon as you can.

And not be afraid. You're gonna have to, you know, fortune favors the bold, I guess.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you're gonna have to, it's gonna take a lot of work, obviously. Going to retail is not easy, but I think it's more important now unless we go into another pandemic shutdown, which nobody wants, you know, but. But I think it's important. And if you have a product that can get on store shelves, I think it should be part of your go-to-market strategy at some point in the, you know, early on.

Yeah. How much does pricing have to change in that scenario? Because if it's initially an all e-commerce and they've got I'm guessing, I'm not very familiar with CPG, so these are some assumptions I have, that the pricing model is much different than a retail. And you've got the wholesale, but I'm just curious if the top line consumer price has to go up when you go retail, or you just have to accept less margin when you go retail, or if the costs are the same, it's just a different logistical nightmare.

I don't know. From what I'm seeing, You know, um, you try to, you try to keep the pricing the same, right? And from what I'm seeing, that way, you know, there's— the minute you're not, you're not map on one thing versus another, you're probably going to see that that one thing that's the minimum advertised price is going to outdo whatever, whichever channel doesn't have it, would be my guess. And I, I think from my, from my experience is that at retail, you just take that lesser margin or that lesser profit. You know, that is like the cost of doing business. You know, the chain is going to take their cut. You're going to have to get it there. You know, you're going to get a loss. If you have a product that doesn't have a shelf life, it's going to be expired. You're going to take a loss on those once they come off. But I think that that is just the, you know, you're going to have to fundamentally make a night. That's just like almost any other pricing strategy or SKU strategy. You know, are there certain SKUs that you're stocking at retail that just aren't making money? And if they're not, then they get killed or you just sell them online. And the ones that are profitable, you keep there, right? I mean, I think it's just like anything, it's just like anything else. I mean, you do the same exercise on e-commerce, right? You look at all your products. What are the ones making profit? You keep. If there's, if there's, if there's, um, products that isn't— that aren't profitable, um, unless they're a loss leader, unless they're bringing in new customers. I mean, so much goes into this, but I think on the retail— I think on the retail spot, you know, you, um, definitely have to look at that like, well, if it's not making me money, um, what's the point of having it there?

Yeah, I mean, I, I wasn't suggesting you have two different prices. I was just wondering if how often that that is a barrier for, well, if we have to go retail, our $20 bottle of shampoo is going to have to be $25, and that's going to knock us out of all, you know, being competitive. Or, or if it's just, no, there's enough margin already, we can go retail, we're going to accept less, and it's just a different strategy, and we think it's important, and overall we'll have a lift.

And so I, I, I think it depends on the the CEO and depends on the owner or the founder or whoever's making the decision. Because some, I've dealt with some CEOs that are like, that think, well, it costs us too much, the profit's not there, the profit margin's too small, I don't want to go. And some are, all right, now let's see if we can make it up in volume. Or overall lift, right?

So I think— Yeah, it's interesting. That's where you wanna, yeah, that's where it becomes a really big C-level decision where you've gotta have everybody weighing in from operations to sales to finance, marketing.

Then the marketing guy, I want that brand out there as much as possible. Right. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, all right, so we'll make a 20% margin on this as opposed to 40, but I think it's benefiting us long term just having the brand out there, you know.

Yeah, how do you have those questions? So let's not shift in complete gears, but long term versus short term, uh, in the C-suite when it comes to marketing and branding, you know, those are— they're always kind of at pull and push, yin and yang. We need sales now, but we need to position ourselves long term. Like, how do you navigate those conversations or lead those conversations?

And so I think that in my experience, that's a matter of knowing your audience or who you're dealing with more than anything, right? Because I've dealt with CEOs that are more short-term and are just looking at the, you know, what's this campaign going to do for me now? Whereas, you know, I was just a part of a rebrand, right? Now, a rebrand, I mean, you're not gonna see the effects of that for months and months and months and months. I mean, it's a long-term play. So, and I was gonna be dealing with a CEO that didn't have the patience for that. And lo and behold, they, you know, didn't have the patience for it. And we're like 3 months in, like, where are the results from this? And I was like, well, this, that's not, That's not the point here, is more of a long-term strategy on this. So I think it's about setting expectations, right? And a CEO's gonna want, they always want things, right? But that's in the nature of, especially if they were CEO that was born as an entrepreneur from their own, product or their own service, right? That they're, they're, they're, they're, they have an, uh, they, they have a personality of, of constantly of new ideas, right? Which is great, you know, and it's always like, hey, you know, how about this? And I think it's like you got to take that and like just let's set the expectations and say that is gonna, you know, might take a little bit longer. It's a great idea, but we have to understand that, you know, that's a longer term strategy or a longer term play rather than something that we're going to see immediate return on. You know, in a way, e-commerce and a lot of what we do, especially, you know, over the last 20 years, really spoiled a lot of people in the sense that, you know, now my whole career has been online, right? I graduated college in '99. And I went right into an advertising agency that was starting a web department. Back then, all we were doing was building websites. This was like the internet boom, right? Where the internet bubble, where it was just like getting— there were traditionally ad agency that was a print, a print ad agency that was just like, had clients that were like, we want to get a website. And it was like, all right, but you're just putting— you're just building websites. No one knew how to monetize off the internet at that time. Yeah, just, but not to digress, but, you know, I would think that what e-commerce did was spoil people and make a shorter expectation on the marketing life cycle because we were able with e-commerce and with certain campaigns like paid search, paid social, I mean, you get instant reporting, right? Instant traffic reporting, instant sales reporting, instant revenue reporting, right? So you could like literally optimize and make changes on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. But you think about before e-commerce, and this is before my time, but I can just guess by watching something like Mad Men, you know, they put out like massive campaigns and you probably didn't know if that moved the needle for months and months and months and months. With e-commerce, you can make, you know, decisions on a dime.

Yeah, I agree. And especially in the consumer goods market, you know, B2B is a little less spoiled because it still takes a long time to see some results from some of those digital campaigns. Although, you know, you think you throw an AdWords up and you should be able to generate leads pretty quickly, Maybe that's similar, I guess.

You know what? I think that the network technology is starting to catch up to B2B because, you know, there's this— you know the company, the ad serving company AdRoll? Uh-huh, sure. Yeah. You know, they've been around forever. I mean, that was what Facebook was using to serve ads before Ads Manager came around. And their network is powered by this AI called NextRoll. And NextRoll— and I just, I just heard about this like 2 or 3 months ago, and I've been looking into it. So now they're using the AI NextRoll to facilitate a new ad platform called RollWorks, which is primarily dedicated to finding and building personas around B2B contacts and B2B You know, so you can serve ads. They're, they're saying that NextRoll can now serve ads to people based on their, uh, you know, um, their roles, their functions, their jobs. So you could like build out these personas and, and now serve ads to people, um, for B2B advertising. Interesting. Yeah, isn't that wild?

So I haven't used it yet. They're serving them on the same channels, they're just being able to target by role, essentially. By role. Yeah, role persona.

I haven't used it yet. I'm gonna— I have one client I'm gonna, I'm gonna try it with.

I'll let you know how it goes. Yeah, do definitely. It is fascinating how much data there is on all of us as individuals. Our, our digital footprint has thousands of little pixels to it. A friend of mine works at one of the large, large, large data mining companies, and he says that you can go completely off-grid, get rid of credit cards, not log into a computer, completely off-grid, and then you could pop up on the other side of the country and just start doing your routine email checking, surfing, you know, anonymously, not obviously logging in. And just by the pattern of what you look like or what you look at or when you wake up, they know who you are like that.

Yeah, anonymously.

It's, it's scary.

It's scary. Did you see that face— that Netflix documentary with the Facebook, um, no, I didn't watch that. It's a good one. It was a good one because they had the actual engineers from Facebook, like the guy who developed the like button and stuff like that, right? Oh yeah. And they were talking quite candidly about it. But, you know, I, I've always said— I've been saying this for like 10 years, and I know this is going to sound contrarian to what I do, but I think it's because I'm behind the curtain. If I wasn't doing what I was doing, and— or the day I retire, I'm going to be pulling all my social media off. I'm going to be completely I'm gonna be done because I wouldn't have it. I wouldn't have it. I mean, it does, you know, I know it's just another thing I've always said. I was like, you know, this— I love the internet. I really do. I think the internet is the greatest, one of the single greatest mankind moments or achievements ever. I mean, it's on kin with almost the discovery of fire. I mean, that's how much it made the world such a small place, right? The communication aspects of it. I mean, this is amazing, but leave it to mankind and to humans to absolutely ruin it with like, social media was a beautiful thing. I was, I was, I'm a first-generation Italian. My parents are from Italy and I still have half my cousins, first cousins. My dad still has his house there, you know, prior to 2000 or so, communication with them was like very, very, very rare, rare thing. You know, it was only like on the phone. You know, once Facebook came about, I can communicate with them all the time now, which is amazing. And it's things like that that will like— that make social media and the internet such an amazing, amazing thing. But at the same time, you see, you know, other stuff that it's done. It's, it's, you It's the data mining and stuff. It's— but we— and I feel hypocritical because I use it. I use it to— for my customers and my clients.

Well, it was also— it was a great connector. Now it's a great divider.

And that's—

that's right. The unfortunate thing is it took all the filters off of us, took all the humanity away from us, and everybody feels like they are now there to criticize to, you know, propagandize, do whatever they want. Um, yeah. And I wonder if that pendulum comes back, you know. It's just, it's, it's, it's just an ongoing thing.

Does it feel like it can though? That's the scary part.

I think it can. I, I really do. I think just like anything, there's just, there's going to be a swing back. I, I feel like that. Now maybe I'm wrong, but my kids are, you know, are My kids have only grown up in this negative environment of social. They didn't see the good stuff when Twitter first came out. It was like, hey, I got to meet my new best friend. Let's do a tweet up for lunch. But they're going to get to a point where they're sick of it. Like, I'm not doing that anymore. And it's just going to push it back the other way. And I think there's going to be some maybe societal norms that come out. I just don't think we can continue at this level of divisiveness forever.

You make an excellent point with that, right? Because if you look at, you know, your children, or even like, you know, I mean, I'm not sure what their ages are, but Generation Z, which grew up, you know, completely digital, right? No analog. So they were born into this. So maybe they're— because they were born into it, it's such a natural for them that they won't handle it the way we handled it, our generations, because we were given this, right? So we didn't know how to handle it. Like, and like, you know, we just like— it's like giving a It's like giving monkey fire, right? I mean, you wouldn't do that. But, you know, if you grew up with fire the whole time, you know how to handle it. So maybe you're right. Maybe that's what swings it back. Me and you might be, you know, might have shuffled off our mortal coil before that happens.

Yeah, we'll see. But we'll see. I want to shift gears again. Yeah. So you're a fractional CMO. What is it like? What do you think of the differences between a fractional CMO versus a full-time CMO to maybe other audiences that don't understand that? How would you describe the differences?

Well, yeah, I'm finding myself having to describe the fractional C-suite all the time when people see how I'm positioned. So is it to describe it to just to anybody? Yeah. I mean, the way I see it is we offer and we allow brands that are at a certain level that need to move up to another level The ability to tap into the experience of executives and professionals that have a track record of accomplishments of working with brands to get them to where they need to go, but, you know, they might not be able to afford to bring in that person full-time, and it's like a contract temporary hire which might go permanent, but to me, I feel like there's this like this I think that there's a sweet spot of if you're a brand that is looking for going from startup to mid-market, or you're even just at this point where you're making maybe $10 to $15 million annually, you might not be able to afford to bring in a full-time CMO just yet, depending on— it depends on how you're structured, depends on what you do, depends on what your profit margins are, it depends on a lot. But in order to make— because in order for a brand to really experience growth, to continue growing, they need to tap into the expertise of individuals that can help them do that, right? And I think as a fractional CMO, I allow brands to tap into that type of talent where I can come in, you know, run their marketing department with, you know, The experience of P&L ownership and developing a complete, um, from the top down. I mean, it might have to start all the way, you know, I'm going in and, uh, they're, they're bringing me in, they're like, we really need help with our digital marketing strategy, you know, to try and grow. And I get in there and I'm like, actually, we got to go back, we got to go to the top because your whole brand architecture and brand messaging is off. And, you know, I can't do a digital marketing strategy with improper brand architecture and messaging because it's It flows top down. So we have to go up. So it's like someone coming in, like they never realized that, and it happens a lot. And they have to come in and totally, you know, restructure everything. And then they don't have a marketing budget. They don't have, you know, they don't have a lot of things. And it's getting them situated and getting them set up so that they're operating the department in a proper way. So that they could now grow. Now, if I'm successful, chances are that they might wanna bring that, sometimes you're a victim of your own success. If you're successful, they might be like, all right, we might wanna bring that in full-time now. Either, you know, they might offer me the job, that happened at my last stop, I went from consultant to, you know, hire. Or I don't know, I kind of missed working with a lot of different brands though. Yeah, a lot of different clients.

So yeah, but if you, if you, if you are successful, you are creating some sort of full-time role. It may not be a full— what I've discovered is this may not be a full-time CMO role, but it might be a full-time like marketing manager or head of marketing that can execute on the stuff that you've built because they need a lesser strategic focus moving forward. But that means you're out of a job, which is okay. And that's a part of the fractional world is you're giving employers that option to bring somebody kind of as needed without making that long-term and full-time cost commitment to a person for that role. And as a fractional professional, you're working with multiple clients typically. So you don't have all your eggs in one basket, so you can be a little more objective, uh, and you can kind of be more fluid from one client to the next.

For sure. And, um, I'm telling you, I, I really noticed, uh, over the last— lately, I don't know, I would say over the last 6 months or so, that the fractional messaging, um, it seems like it's across the entire C-suite at this point. It's not just for CMO. It's really, really resonating with brands and companies more than ever. And it's quite exciting.

It is exciting. So one of the things I like to ask fractional professionals is what advice would you give a C-suite for how to hire and what to look for? What are the right characteristics to look for in a fractional C-suite executive, whether it's a CMO or otherwise? What What do you think are the major criteria, top 3 criteria they should look for?

I mean, it's gonna sound, um, like pretty much on the nose, but I think the first one is obviously you're gonna have to look at accomplishments, right? You have to have a track record of success, right? Uh, I like to see a track record of success. Um, I, I think the best fractionals to me at one point were working and had a success on staff at a brand. Um, and I mean, I don't know how, how you would stand on that, but I stand, you know, your stance on that. But because I think in order to really be able to do it for multiple brands and, and understand how, how it works, I think you had to have done it somewhere one time for one brand, and now you took those tools and now you could take them to do them for— now you know what it looks like to do it and you could do it for multiples, right? I don't know, because as a fractional CMO, it's more than just building up digital marketing strategy. It's literally, I— it's running the— it's running the marketing department. I'm stepping in to run your entire department. You have to have run a department in order to, to do that, right? And if you just came from an agency, you never really did that, because if you just have agency experience, you have agent, you have experience doing very specific things, and then it was just handing it off to a client, and then they were doing their own thing, right? So I think that, that, I think having a track record of accomplishments is one. Two would be having done it for on staff at a company is another one. And then the third one I think is most important. You got to be, um, you got to make sure that they're somehow organized through project management, project management skills, or— because there's a lot, there's a lot of moving parts.

Yeah, a lot of moving parts. Absolutely, a lot. Um, well, you're doing a lot of testing and a lot of trials and a lot of vendors and a lot of internal work. It's just It's, it's a lot in marketing that has to go on that most people don't understand the complexity anymore of marketing. It's so much more complex than it used to be.

Yeah. And not only that, I mean, when you're working with multiple clients— oh yeah, it's like, you know, you deal— you, you've been working here, you know, you, you're, you're focused here. The next thing you know, you got to go and you got to— it's like you're totally shifting to another, another, you know, different— not only different project, a whole different brand, you know. It's like they had their own problems, and it's like, uh, wow, that, that takes— but I kind of— I mean, I don't know, I find that— I also find that fun, you know. I kind of got bored a little bit working on staff after a while.

Yeah, I tell, I tell people, or what I've heard I should say from other people, is that, um, it's important to have a someone with a full-time fractional mindset. And what I mean by that is they're in the fractional business to build a business, to stay in it, and they're not looking for their next gig. Sometimes the offer will come, but, but I think the best fractional leader is one that is there long-term as a fractional, and they've figured out how to work with multiple clients, how to bring value quickly, how to— they've developed the processes that work really well to deliver the service. But somebody— and the other reason is there are a lot of people that are out of work that are calling themselves fractional just to get the full-time job. And that could be a good transition for the right person. But if you're looking for that true fractional service, you don't want somebody who just got tired of their last gig and is now out on their own and pretend— and it's not that they couldn't do a good job, it's just a different mindset. So I think it's important that someone full-time committed to the fractional lifestyle is a major criteria for a C-suite to consider hiring a true fractional.

That's a great, great point. That would be number 4.

Yeah. Well, and then the 5th, I'll tell you my 5th, and this is the biggest of all of them, it's cultural fit. And I've seen more engagements go bad and heard more horror stories about engagements go bad. Everything else could be right, but man, there's just not a fit. It could be a personality conflict between the CMO and the CEO and different CEOs. Like you said, if that CEO is a short-term, I need results right away, and that CMO or CTO or CFO is, I'm a visionary, I'm a big picture thinker, that falls apart pretty quickly. So having a real cultural core value kind of vision fit is super, super important.

100%. I agree with that, you know, wholeheartedly. Yeah, I mean, I like to take a long-term— I mean, I like to take a long-term approach and vision to what I'm doing. Fortunately, it seems like a lot of CEOs and brand owners out there are, you know, they really need— they like to see the results. So you try to marry the two, you know, and the one good thing about e-commerce is there are things we can do to see instant, like, you know, instant gratification, and then you, you know, you marry that with the, the long-term, the long-term benefit.

Yeah, yeah. So, uh, other questions I like to ask, just get various inputs from, um, as a leader, as a fractional leader What do you think are some of the inherent traits of a good leader? Maybe not, you know, of yourself, but you think about other leaders that you look up to and have experienced. What are some of those characteristics or traits?

Um, you know, I— a big, big one that I, that I, I pride myself on that had big impacts on me as I was coming along in my career with, um individuals that, you know, I'm thinking of right now that had impacted how I, how I developed and how I grew. And what I try to do as a leader is mentoring my staff. I'm big on their growth. I take great pride in making sure that they have a path forward or they see a path forward. There's a growth plan for them as well. And that I try to mentor and impart my knowledge to them so that they can, you know, grow, grow in their careers themselves. And collaboration. I'm a big, big collaborator.. And I think that those two go hand in hand. So when I'm running staff meetings, I like to make sure that everybody's voice is heard and that everybody feels that they are part of what's going on and that they have a voice and that their contributions matter. And, you know, so within the meetings and the collaborations, there's also the idea that when, you know, we're looking at analytics or looking at reports or looking at how campaigns did or whatever the purpose of that meeting is, and I see I can make heads or tails out of the analytics to make a decision, I like to show them and explain and explain, like, you know, what went behind that. And, you know, and I think that that is— that that's— that that's big time for me in leadership. Um, those two things are definitely mentoring and collaboration, or, or, or, you know, what I was brought up with and, um, what I like to instill.

Yeah, those are great. Yeah, I agree 100%. It's, uh, It's— and when you think about the opposite of that, a person that's given a role of leadership but doesn't mentor those around him or her or doesn't collaborate, you know, it doesn't last long in a leadership position.

No, it just doesn't work. It doesn't. And the opposite, I mean, I've seen owners, um, of brands that basically just want a staff of button pushers. Yeah, you know, and just to do what they want done. And you have this— you have this tremendously talented individual and under you that, you know, I, I love when my staff instill on me or show me something or make a suggestion that I didn't think of, right? And I'm like, that's brilliant. I'm like, I love that idea, you know, let's go with that. That makes me feel great, you know. And then, and, you know, you learn from them as well, you know, because every, you know, if, if you just, if you surround yourself with— I like to surround myself with smart, intelligent people that are really Highly effective and highly functional in what they do. And they're young, they're eager, they're hungry, they love the brand, they love where they work, and they just want to participate and do the best job they possibly can. And when they share great ideas, there's nothing that makes me happier than that. And then I follow their careers on LinkedIn and I see that they're moving on and they'll be like, yeah, Hey, I'm moving on, I got another position, you know, to step up. And that's great. And you see them growing. I mean, that's, that's, that is so fantastic to me. And I love seeing that. And the people that just want to hire button pushers just to, just to enact their own vision. I mean, those aren't leaders. Those are, you know, and they're, they're not, they're not going anywhere. And, uh, yeah, I mean, that's— that is the opposite. You know, I've— I'm sad to say that I've seen that happen time and time again.

Oh yeah, we all have. I think, you know, if you've had any amount of time in corporate America or business, you've come across good and bad leaders.

Yeah. So I— and I like to, you know, um, and I, and I, and I think it's, you know, it's not just even leaders of staff. It's, um, it's— I think there's also a trait of how you treat your, your partners, your colleagues, and your, um, your equals in a sense that I— over this, over the, the entirety of my career, you know, I've nurtured and made relationships with vendors, agencies, partners, um, that to this day I have great, great working relationships with. And we still to this day execute on a lot of, a lot of great, terrific campaigns to success. And, you know, it's amazing that whenever I need them or I need to tap into my network, because I've— you don't burn these bridges and you nurture these relationships and you create and you mentor people and you treat people the right way through leadership and through partnership. Um, they're always there for you, you know, and it's fantastic.

Yeah, it's, it's your net— you've built your network of support and connections for, for everything you need moving forward.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that that's a, that's a point of a part of leadership as well, that good leadership that comes with, that comes with that.

Yeah, yeah. Well, what do you like to do for fun, Anthony?

Oh, wow. So I live on the Jersey coast, so I like the beach. I'm a big beach guy. Like, I like to go fishing. Love all forms of entertainment, whether it's like movies, concerts, music shows. I'm big into that. I am a lifelong comic book nerd. So I have an extensive, um, vintage comic book and collectible collection that I've been curating for years. So that's, uh, that's awesome. That's a hobby of mine. Uh, Marvel mostly. I'm a big Marvel guy. Um, and, uh, you know, my family and, and friends. And just, um, a big family guy, big friends guy. Uh, love getting together, love cooking, a big cooker. I like to cook. Um, yeah. Oh, and I regularly— I work out every day. I do exercise every day.

I'm into big—

I'm very much into my health.

How did you get into the comic book, uh, collectibles?

So when I was a kid, I don't know, I might have been like 10 years old, I remember I was, uh, sick home from school and not a fake sick. I was legitimate, like, you know, fever type illness. And then my mom came home and she bought me 4 comic books. She bought me a Spider-Man, a Hawkman, a G.I. Joe, and I can't remember the fourth— a Batman. And that was it. I just collected comics really ever since then. And then I just loved them. And, you know, there was like, I think that, you know, people have a misrepresentation of comic books, especially Marvel comic books. They're actually very, very well written, very, very creative. I mean, they have— Marvel Comics, especially thanks to Stan Lee, you know, he created very complex characters. I mean, you have like guys like You know, if you think about it, back in the early '60s when Spider-Man came out, before then DC Comics were all about like, you know, Superman, Batman, just like this good— these guys just fighting crime and, you know, all these not really deep stories. But then Marvel came about and Stan Lee was creating characters that were flawed in many ways and really resembled real life. And it was like, you know, you had Spider-Man who This young kid, he's a nerd, gets bit by a spider, gets these superpowers, right? What does he do? He doesn't go fight crime. He decides, oh, I want to go and make money off of this. So he goes and starts wrestling and making money to buy a car to impress some girl. Um, you know, he lets this burglar go by because he didn't want to be bothered with him. This burglar ends up killing his, his, his uncle, and from there he realizes that he needs to do good with these powers. But he didn't go into fighting crime. This was a cop. This was a kid that was emotionally flawed at the heart of it and has ever since then been trying to, you know, has been trying to correct that mistake. And I think that when you look at it at that level, the characterization of these characters and how they were developed and how they were built over time is quite creative and is really, really deep. And then there was in recent times, in the last 10 years or so, the writing of these books has been actually quite revolutionary, right? You have these guys that write these books. I believe the gentleman who wrote Batman at one point, this guy, this gentleman, his name is Scott Snyder. He was actually like the head creative writing professor at at NYU and Sarah Lawrence, right? I mean, you get these guys, they're like, you know, our age or younger, and they grew up with comic books. And these are guys that were supremely, supremely talented writers who probably could have went into writing novels or writing different forms of media, but they love comic books so much that they took their tremendous creative writing skills and wrote for comic books. And, um, I, you know, you, you're seeing some really, really great storylines and, and really great independent books that, you know, almost every movie and television series you see now is based off of some comic book. And like The Walking Dead and, and, uh, all these different, these different ones that are coming out, um, that are coming out to some like major acclaim. And that's because of these guys that, you know, I truly believe if it wasn't comics, we'd be writing novels and decided that we're going to write for this different media.

And it's really creative stuff. That's fascinating. That's really interesting. I have not been a, you know, consumer of comic books. So to hear you just share that story makes me want to go buy a few of my own.

I could recommend some to you. I mean, the writing on them is really, really tremendous. It's like the— well, it's like the writing you see on these different, like, Netflix shows, right? I mean, you have, like— think about the TV we used to watch back in the '80s. It was good, but it was nothing like these guys are writing, like they're writing now. I mean, these are some tremendously talented individuals.

What are your top 2 or 3 comic books now?

I've always loved Spider-Man. He's my favorite, and he— it's really, really good stuff. Um, outside of the superhero stuff, because that, that's being written, there's this one comic book called Saga that is like Star Wars meets Game of Thrones. Okay, it's like that, and it's really, really good. And the second one— the third one that I would recommend besides Saga or some Spider-Man stories that have come out recently that have been tremendous would be— oh, let me think. That's a good one.

What is—

they actually just made a television series about it on FX right now. It's called Y: The Last Man, which is is pretty interesting. It has to do with, um, this, this guy wakes up one day and he is— him and his male monkey are the last living beings on the planet with the Y chromosome. And it's just— yeah, it's just— and it's, it's, uh, just a, uh, a tale that of, uh, of, of what happened and him trying to, you navigate this, this world being the last man. And, you know, like, he, they, you— he's got to hide himself because him being the last man would drive, like, would, would, would draw— it would make society go crazy because there's no men left.

Wow. Yeah, that sounds interesting.

It is. I mean, it is pretty interesting.

Yeah. The, uh, the one, uh, there's, there's one comic book I don't know, I'm assuming it was a comic book at one time. Uh, Loki is a character in the whatever shows they're on. Yeah. Um, I remember, is it that— is he the one that has the multiverse like experience on one of the TV shows?

He did. He just went through the— his series went through the multiverse.

Yeah. Yeah. So I had like an aha moment when I was thinking about, um, how visionary entrepreneurs think about things. As a visionary myself and knowing a lot of visionaries, you kind of can see the future in your own head, like crystal clear. This is where we're headed. You might know a lot of CEOs that are like this, like, this is where we're going and I can see it clearly. And sometimes here's the problem, you get so attached to that one vision that to hell or high water, we're all going here and you're not listening to people or you're not collaborating or you can get just so fixated. I had this aha when I saw that Multiverse show with Loki, like, holy cow, there's actually a multiple array of visions that really are out there. And a true visionary thinker can start not just seeing one, but can see dozens or hundreds. And then that realization for me personally, and I've shared with other visionaries, is it takes that laser focus off of vision and it widens it and allows you to make some moves and changes along the way. And you can be much more accepting and not attached to a specific outcome and take the path that comes to you. And as a business owner, I found that to be a super eye-opening realization for myself. And it all came from that movie and the multiverse concept.

Yep. That's— that is an excellent take. That's an excellent take. See, I'm telling you, comic books are very inspiring.

Yeah, they were. And I, I share that story often, uh, for anybody who's seen that movie.

Yeah, yeah, it's a good one. I'm surprised you watched that series, the Loki one.

Well, it's the kids, so— other kids, yeah, over COVID, like they were going through, like, all right, let's do Star Wars from the beginning, let's do the Marvel series from the beginning, let's do— and so we just I watched them with them. It was fun. I enjoyed that stuff.

I mean, they did a tremendous job. That was the gentleman who runs the MCU, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Kevin Feige. I mean, that guy was a visionary of what he built over the last, I guess it's like 12 to 13 years now with the Marvel Cinematic Universe and how it's all interconnected and They did a fantastic job.

I mean, it is, it is, uh, really, when you, when you step back and look at it, it's pretty amazing what they've done with that, that series, uh, and kind of how everything— like, there's little Easter eggs all over the place.

Oh my God, it's just, it's amazing the amount of, like, thought, thinking, uh, brain power that would, uh— like, I, I think he, he has on his wall in his office, he has, like, he He's like 5 years out on everything and connecting it all, you know? And then they built the writers and the writers of those series, of those movies, they curate them, right? So they'll take a lot of them from the comic book, from the Marvel comics, then they put them through like their own, like, it's not like a school, but it's like a system of writing. So they curate the writers in a specific way for those movies, for the screenplays. I mean, that's like, uh, on another level of development.

It's very impressive. Yeah. Well, uh, I really appreciated our conversation today. It was fun to end on, uh, on this, this topic. Uh, but, uh, I think everything we talked about was pretty informative. Um, thank you for your time.

Oh yeah, it was, it was great. I had a great time. Anytime, I'll, you know, uh, you want to talk, I'm, I'm here.

Good. And then if people want to reach out to you, I think that we talked the best way is, uh, LinkedIn.

Is that right? Yeah, you could just do, uh, go right to LinkedIn, Anthony Berardo. Um, I'm not sure how many there are of me there, but it's, uh, you know, the, the end would be, uh, A Berardo, B-E-R-A-R-D-O.

Yeah. And we'll have the details in the show notes, uh, with some other ways to contact you, but LinkedIn's the preferred Yeah, that's awesome. All right. Well, thanks for everybody out there listening. I hope you picked up a couple thoughts and maybe go grab a comic book and share what you think with us later. Thanks. And that's a wrap.

There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at yourcmo.com. Your CMO dot com.

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